A Special Relationship

by Douglas Kennedy

  ‘Thank you for the coffee,’ I said, smiling sweetly.

  One of the more intriguing aspects of Life on Anti-Depressants was the way it eventually whittled away all rough edges, all potential sharp emotional corners, and left you feeling curiously placid about much of the shit that life can throw at you. The doctor was right – its effects were cumulative. Though I was already registering its increasing efficacy while I was still in hospital, its tranquillizing benefits were only really beginning to kick in now that I was back on the proverbial home front. What struck me most forcibly was how the anti-depressants had softened so much of my natural contrariness; my instinctive need to talk back when challenged. It’s not as if I had suddenly become programmed into robotic, hubby-worshipping complacency. Rather, I felt like I’d been dispatched to a torpid, tropical place where the general rule of behavioural thumb was: who cares? I was no longer in South London; I was beached on some super-laid-back, ganja-hazed island where all of life’s vicissitudes were greeted with a stoned shrug.

  All right, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit here – but the fact is, the anti-depressants numbed that part of the brain in which anger and resentment lurked. Had Tony rolled in drunk and turned nasty on me in the past, I certainly wouldn’t have forgiven him after one mumbled, hung-over apology. But now, I accepted the cup of coffee, the clumsy kiss on the head, and the nervous tone of contrition.

  It wasn’t just the drugs that made me so ego te absolvo. There was a deep part of me that was terrified of becoming combative – fearing that it would send out warning signals about my mental stability. Anyway, considering the extremity of my own conduct in the days leading up to my hospitalization, I had to cut Tony some slack here … and let him adjust to having us around again. In turn, he spent the next two weeks being ultra-polite – if a little preoccupied. No, there were no further five-in-the-morning boozing sessions, but he was frequently held up at the paper until nine or ten several nights a week, and – of course – the novel was still flowing (or so he said). Which meant that, around midnight most evenings, he’d excuse himself and vanish upstairs.

  I didn’t complain. I just travelled down the anti-depressant path of least resistance. When he wanted to share our bed (around twice a week) and have sex with me, I was pleased. When he ‘needed’ to stay out late at the Chronicle and/or hide upstairs, I accepted it. I was just grateful that we had silently negotiated a degree of familial stability between us and that my own stability was holding up.

  Another curious thing about the slow progression out of depression: you begin to crave routine. And dealing with a baby is certainly bound up in the metronomic regularity of feeds, diaper changes, the usual gaseous post-bottle discomfort, rocking him to sleep, being close at hand at all times, coping with colic, coping with another feed, another diaper change, the usual gaseous post-bottle …

  More tellingly I was now so enjoying my son. Gone was the terrible fear that I couldn’t handle the basics of motherhood, let alone that terrifying postnatal fear that I would do him harm. On the contrary, I now delighted in his company – revelling in the way his hand closed round my finger, the way he nuzzled his head against mine as I held him, the fact that it was so wonderfully easy to make him laugh.

  ‘Sounds like you guys really are an item now,’ Sandy said to me after I mentioned the sheer pleasure I was getting from Jack’s company.

  ‘He’s a terrific kid,’ I said.

  ‘It’s great to hear you so up. You must be relieved.’

  ‘Just a little,’ I said with a laugh.

  As I wasn’t exactly on the lookout for great intellectual or professional stimulation right now – and also seriously wanted to keep everything on a profoundly even keel – I accepted this circumscribed domestic routine with a certain degree of relief. Cha the cleaner was on hand from nine until midday every morning – and she proved herself to be highly capable with Jack. She kept him happy while I caught up with sleep or took myself off for a walk down the tow path. She organized his clothes, dealt with all the paraphernalia of babyhood, and gave me a necessary three-hour respite from motherhood … which I was then happy to resume.

  One morning, sitting in Coffee Republic on the High Street, nursing a latte, looking at all the other moms with pushchairs around me, staring out at the monocultural blandness of Putney’s main thoroughfare, the thought struck me: this is my life now.

  And the New England stoic in me reasoned: you have managed to survive a major tumble into deep deranged muck. You’ve come through – shakily, but you are functioning. You seem to have achieved an entente cordiale with your husband. You have your son – with whom you are now fully engaged. Eventually, you will find your way back to the – workaday world. But for now …

  This is my life.

  And it could be far worse – or marked by real misfortune.

  Like my poor sister Sandy. She rang me late the next night in a state of convulsive shock. Her ex-husband, Dean, had been killed earlier that day in a climbing accident on Mount Kathadin in northern Maine. A trail guide, he’d been leading a group across a particularly treacherous corner of the mountain known as The Knife Edge, because it was just that: a thin finger of terra firma spanning a deep gorge. Dean must have traversed it several dozen times and was an experienced mountaineer. But earlier that morning a wind blew up and sent him right over the edge. They found his body a few hours later – his neck snapped like a twig, his head caved in. Instantaneous death, they figured.

  ‘He probably never knew what hit him,’ Sandy said.

  I thought: given that he’d fallen nearly a thousand feet, he must have been aware of what was going to hit him – that, verily, his life was about to end. But I didn’t say this to her.

  ‘Dumb bastard,’ Sandy said, crying. ‘I always warned him about that damn mountain. You know, we climbed it on our honeymoon …’

  I did remember – and always thought what a strange thing to do to celebrate a new marriage. But Dean was always outdoorsy, and Sandy was madly in love with him at the time, and love will make you do completely out-of-character things like climb a mountain, even though Sandy was the type who preferred avoiding stairs whenever possible.

  ‘You know what really gets me: that one time we went up Kathadin together, I kept doing this big song-and-dance when we reached The Knife Edge about how I couldn’t cross it; that it was just too terrifying for me, and I’d end up stranded in the middle of the trail. Know what Dean said? “I’ll never leave you stranded anywhere.” And, of course, I believed him.’

  She started to cry again – telling me her three boys were taking the news hard, and that Dean’s new girlfriend was distraught. I’d never met the woman – but I always disliked her, because of her role as the happy home-wrecker. Now, however, all I could feel was desperate pity for her – especially as she was at the back of the climbing group when the accident happened, and saw him go over.

  And there was Sandy – now weeping uncontrollably over the death of a man whom, just a few weeks earlier, she was referring to as ‘that scumbag ex-husband of mine’. But that’s the nature of a divorce, isn’t it? You find yourself loathing that person around whom your world once centred. Sometimes you cannot help but wonder if the reason you now despise him is because you still so desperately love him.

  Sandy said that the funeral would be in three days’ time. Immediately, I said, ‘I’ll be there.’ She argued that I was in no fit state to cross the Atlantic; that she had the three boys to support her. But I knew that three kids under the age of twelve were going to need support of their own during this horrendous time. So I said, ‘I think I can do this.’ And I told her I’d get back to her within a few hours.

  Tony was exceptionally sympathetic when I informed him of the news. He virtually insisted that I go – offering to get his secretary to book the ticket to Boston for me, while also suggesting that I call Annie’s Nannies to see if they could find full-time round-the-clock help for four or five days.

  ‘But won’
t that cost us a fortune?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a family emergency’ he said.

  But before I called the nanny agency, I phoned Dr Rodale – and was fortunate enough to catch her during office hours at her private rooms on Wimpole Street. She’d seen me for a fast consultation at the hospital just last week, and seemed genuinely pleased with my progress. Not pleased enough to lower my dosage of anti-depressants, but confident enough about my current stability to okay me to travel the Atlantic.

  That day, Cha was in working – and when I mentioned that I would be out of the country for seventy-two hours and was having to find a full-time nanny, she told me she’d do the job for £100 a day, all in. I hired her on the spot. That afternoon, we moved one of the single beds I’d bought for the guest room into the nursery, so Cha could sleep next to Jack. When I told Tony of this arrangement, he seemed pleased with it … especially as it also meant not having to pay agency fees, let alone bringing a stranger into the house. Nor did I have to indulge in the usual paranoid fantasies about a husband left alone in a house with a nanny – as I thought that, even at his most drunken, there’s no way that he would make a pass at a fifty-five-year-old Thai house cleaner.

  Having received the medical all-clear and organized child care, I found myself two days later on a Virgin flight to Boston. When I got to the airport, I received something of a surprise – as it turned out that Tony had booked me into their better class of seat called Premium Economy. As soon as I checked in, I rang him at the office and said, ‘Are you insane … and I mean that in the nicest possible way?’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Of course, I’m pleased. I’m just desperately worried about the cost.’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad, really. Just three hundred more than the usual economy fare.’

  ‘But that’s still a lot of money.’

  ‘You’re still recovering from a tough business … and you need to be in reasonable shape to deal with the next few days. Sandy is going to need a lot of support.’

  ‘I’m so grateful,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be. It’s the least I …’

  I couldn’t tell if he’d been pulled away from the phone, or had suddenly gone quiet on me.

  ‘Tony, you still there?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, got …’

  Another odd pause. My mobile phone was obviously playing up again.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got to go,’ he said.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Fine, fine … just being hauled into conference, that’s all.’

  ‘Look after our great guy’ I said.

  ‘Have no fear. Travel well. Call me tonight when you land.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Love you,’ he said.

  Some hours later, halfway over the Atlantic, it struck me that that was the first time Tony had told me he loved me since …

  Well, I couldn’t really remember the last time he said that.

  The next three days were a nightmare. My sister was a wreck. My three nephews were in various stages of incomprehension and grief. The funeral turned into a territorial exercise, with Sandy, the children and myself on one side of the church, and Dean’s family sitting on the opposite side with Jeannie (his new love), her people, and a lot of tanned, muscular types who looked like they were members of the Sierra Club (the flag of this organization covering Dean’s casket). Though Dean’s parents spent a little time after the funeral with their three grandchildren, everyone studiously avoided Sandy and her younger sister with the glassy jet-lagged/anti-depressant-fuelled eyes. The entire day was an ordeal – made around five times worse by the fact that, courtesy of my anti-depressants, I was forbidden to touch even the most minimal mouthful of alcohol. And God, this was one of those times when I really could have used a drink. I could not get over the internecine pettiness into which families descend … even after something as traumatic as an accidental death. Surely, Dean’s demise pointed up the most salient fact of temporal existence: that everything is so desperately momentary. Yet we spend so much of our time here in endless conflict with others that we lose sight of the ephemeralness of life. Or is it because we so recognize the evanescent, fugitive nature of all endeavour that we try to give it meaning through conflict? Are we that fatuous, that preposterous?

  When we got back to Sandy’s house that evening, the children were so drained and exhausted that they fell into their beds and straight to sleep. At which point Sandy sat down on the sofa next to me and fell apart. I held her as she sobbed into my shoulder. She cried for nearly a quarter-hour without interruption. When she finally subsided, she dried her eyes and said, ‘That asshole broke my heart.’

  We sat up late that night, talking, talking. She’d received a call the day before from Dean’s lawyer, informing her that everything in his estate (which wasn’t much – bar a life insurance policy worth around $250,000) had been left to his girlfriend. Which, in turn, meant that Sandy’s already sizeable financial problems were even more severe – as Dean’s small $750 per month child support contribution was an important component of the household budget. I didn’t know what to say, except that I wished I myself was well-heeled enough to give her a monthly cheque for that amount.

  ‘You’ve got enough crap on your plate,’ she said.

  At which point – as if on cue – Tony rang from London. I glanced at my watch. Seven pm in Boston, midnight in London. Much to my immense relief, all he wanted to do was see how I was doing, and to report that all was well with Jack. We’d spoken the previous nights – and on each occasion, Tony expressed genuine concern about Sandy’s welfare, and also quizzed me on my own mental state. This time, he also gave me an update on Cha (‘She’s handling everything just fine – even if she never smiles’), and wanted to know everything about the funeral. His tone was easy, receptive. As he took down the details of my return flight (‘I’ll have a car pick you up at Heathrow’), he mentioned that he was doing a fast day-trip to Paris tomorrow morning. Some G7 foreign ministers thing. But not to worry – Cha had been briefed, he’d be back on the last Eurostar train tomorrow night, ready to greet me when I walked in the next morning.

  When the call ended, Sandy said, ‘You guys seem to be in a good place.’

  ‘Yes – it’s amazing the effect anti-depressants can have on a rocky marriage.’

  ‘It’s not just the drugs that pulled you through all this. You should also give yourself a little credit.’

  ‘For what? Coming completely unstuck, and ending up in a psychiatric unit?’

  ‘You had an illness …’

  ‘So they keep telling me.’

  ‘And you’re through the worst of it now.’

  ‘So they keep telling me.’

  ‘And Tony’s behaving himself.’

  ‘I think we’ve established a kind of armistice between us.’

  ‘Sounds better than a lot of marriages I know.’

  ‘Like you and Dean?’

  ‘We were doing fine … or, at least, that’s what I thought. Until he heeded the call of the wild.’

  ‘Maybe he …’

  ‘What? Hated the fact that I’d gotten fat and dumpy?’

  ‘Stop that.’

  ‘But it’s the truth.’

  ‘No, the truth here is that Dean probably just needed a bit of drama in his life.’

  She looked at me quizzically.

  ‘Drama? I don’t follow.’

  ‘He might have been perfectly content with you and the boys. But then this woman came along and …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Maybe he saw an opportunity for drama, that’s all. A new life out in the woods. Very romantic – until you realize that leading groups of tourists up and down the same mountain also gets boring. And “boring” is the one thing in life we most fear … more so than death, I think. Because it accentuates the uselessness of everything. Which is why you should never underestimate the human need for drama – it makes us believe we’re all starring in thi
s wide-screen epic of our own making, rather than getting bogged down in the usual day-to-day stuff.’

  Sandy looked at me carefully.

  ‘What was the name of those anti-depressants you’re on?’

  I certainly popped the specified two capsules when I woke the next morning. Then I called home. No answer in London – making me speculate that Cha must have taken Jack out for a walk in his buggy. So I called Tony on his mobile, just to say a quick hello, but received his voice mail.

  ‘Know you’re in Paris,’ I said, ‘but I simply wanted to say a quick Bonjour and tell you that I am so looking forward to getting home, and seeing you guys.’

  I spent the afternoon in a shopping mall with Sandy buying, a few baby clothes and even splurging on a Banana Republic leather jacket for Tony. I popped two more anti-depressants at lunchtime, and dropped the final two tablets right after saying goodbye to my sister at Logan Airport – in which she became teary about yet again dispatching her sister to alien terrain.

  ‘You’ll pull through this,’ I told her. ‘Because you have to.’

  Before I boarded the flight, I went to a phone and called the house in London, hoping to touch base with Cha before she went to sleep (or, for that matter, if she was still up, walking the floors with Jack). But there was no answer. I glanced at my watch: 7.15 in Boston, just after midnight in London. She was evidently having an easy night of it with the boy, and had already gone to sleep.

  Which is exactly what I did after settling down into my large Premium Economy seat, silently thanking Tony for such a spontaneous act of generosity. When we were airborne, I screwed in a pair of earplugs, blacked out the world with an eyeshade, and let the tautness of the last few days give way to exhausted sleep.

  Then we were in London – and as Tony said, there was a mini-cab driver waiting for me at the arrivals gate. We’d been shoved across the Atlantic at allegro con molto speed, and had therefore arrived forty minutes ahead of schedule. Which meant we were cruising down the M4 at 6.45 am – and I was resisting the temptation to ring home on my mobile, for fear of waking Tony or Cha.